“Accessing Green Space in Melbourne: Measuring Inequity and Household Mobility”
PhD Candidate: Farahnaz Sharifi
Supervisory Team: Associate Professor Wendy Stone, Associate Professor Andi Nygaard, and Dr Iris Levin
Centre for Urban Transitions
Research Problems
Rapid urbanisation is in many countries accompanied by rising inequality Within cities, rising socio-spatial inequality manifests itself in the ability of some residents to outcompete other residents for the locations that provide access to key economic, physical and social infrastructure.
Inequality also manifests in the concentration of poorer health and a series of concentrated social problems (e.g. anti-social behaviours).
One way for cities to deal with the manifestations of inequality is through the provision of key social infrastructure, such as educational infrastructure including school grounds or sports ovals or, the focus of this paper, access to green space.
1. How does access to different types of green space vary for low-income households in Melbourne, Australia?
2.How does low-income household relocation within metropolitan Melbourne affect access to green space over time?
-Why Melbourne?
Rapid population growth
Rapid Urban development and densification
The largest increase in property values over the past 25 years.
Green Space degradation
The heatwaves is likely to reach 50C by 2040.
Geographical Units: On average SA2s are approximately 7.5 km\(_2\) contain some 5,900 households (HH). (ABS)
Socio-Economic Data: The proportion of low-income households (HH) in SA2, (lowest 40%) (ABS).
Green space Data: Unlike previous studies we utilize a measure of green space that incorporates all alternative green space locations weighted by distance and congestion (users), rather than proximity or share of locality (DELWP).
- Methods:
Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA): to determine the existence of bivariate statistically significant spatial clusters of low-income proportion and green space index.
Mann-Whitney U Test: to discern the spatial distributional relationship between low-income proportion and green space index.